Sometimes you can just "feel" life.

I started this post as a reply to a post that Indie made about Townes Van Zandt. Here’s what she said:

“One of these days I'll write a whole post about the late Townes Van Zandt. I'm in love with his poetry, in love with his heart, his soul, his sad cowboy voice and his dark eyes. He was the king of the mixed metaphor, but I don't care. He speaks to my soul.”

To those that don’t know Indie, she is an English major, She lives in Arcata, She is steeped in Humboldt State, and she works at the Mckinleyville newspaper. Usually, that is the type of person that would scare the hell out of me to be around, because I’m a walking treasurer trove of literary mistakes.

To which I replyed:
Indie,
“All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances ;”

I started out to take that metaphor and mix it up, but I just couldn’t do it. It hit to close to home for me to be irreverent.

Indie, it isn’t often that English majors can sort to the bottom of a persons life and feel the soul of that person like you do. Usually that means that a person has suffered some pain in their own life. There is an old saying “When the country and western songs are all about you, you know that… Well you get my drift.

In my life I’ve seen many people pushed aside because of their poor command of the English language. Some of the people that I knew, when I was a lad, were mostly poor people that moved out here from the poor states, Okalahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, or Texas. They moved here and went to work in the lumber industry. They were mostly poor folks and struggling to make a living. They didn’t have an education and they didn’t get any jobs other than those that were mostly just labor. They were usually called Okies and people usually shunned them. The kids were made fun of in school. People would make fun of their accents, and generally looked down on the things that they did. The “Okies” soon learned to shut up around “educated folks” and not say anything around the kind of people that criticized them.

Even as a child, I was fascinated by these people, I still am. They all had stories. Some had stories of survival. Some had stories of their trips to California and all of the things that they saw along the way. The one thing that they had in common is they were doers. I became great friends with a kid from Arkansas. Like I said these people were doers. Gary was ten and I was eight when we first met. Gary and I got in more darn trouble than you can ever imagine. But we had more darn fun than any of the other kids around. He and I were pretty fair mechanics and we would get the old cars that were behind my dads garage running and race them around my grandmothers orchard.

I’ve always been good at fishing out stories, and Gary’s dad had endless stories. When they came California, they came through Texas. Being fairly uneducated, they under-anticipated how big Texas was. They were driving as far as they could and sleeping in the car and taking turns driving. The way Gary’s dad told his story is:

“We’s fixin’ to come to California, so’s we get out this here road map and it has this big blue line that the man at the garage say’s was the color of all the good roads. So’s we takes off with a pocket full of money and a tank fulla’ gas. It waren’t long for we was in Texas. Wall, after we’s hit Texas, the roads got real long and straight. We drove for hours and it looked like we was in the same place. We figured we’d drive faster and get there quicker. We was moving right along real regular like, but seemed like we was still in the same place. Soon it’s my turn to drive and I figured I’d get ‘er done, so I started driven’ real fast like. Things was going by pretty fast and the folks was looking at me like I was crazy or somethin’. But when we looked out the window it still looked like we was in the same place. So I picked her up a little bit. Soon we was going as fast as that poor old car could go, it woun’t go any faster, but we was still in the same spot. Well, we was drivin’ along real good and I was getting purty tired when we came to where things didn’t look the same, and there was this durn turn in the road. We was going too fast to make that turn and I knew it, so’s I just take the old car right off the road and through the dessert. Cactus was flyin’ ever’where, the kids was a screaming like they thought they was gonna die. Finally we got stopped, there we was, stuck in the sand out in the middle of this Texas dessert, with one durn turn in the middle. I never did figure why they put that turn there. It took ever’body to push the car back on the road, so’s we got in and took off again, only this time I had to drive slower. The kids always like to tell the story about how their dad could go faster, and faster, and faster, until pretty soon he’s goin’ “mowin’ the cactus speed“. So now ever time I drive real fast like, the kids say that I’m “really mowin the cactus now.”

Somewhere along the way an “Okie” kid taught me how to whittle a green willow whistle. Can you do that?

I like people that can tell a good story, I like to listen to them even more.

Indie, thanks for the reminder, If you don’t taste, smell, hear, and feel life, it ain’t worth living! Now, Nora Jones singing Townes Van Zandt. That’s livin'.